That night I sleep a troubled sleep.

I dream that Phineas is standing waist deep in a stream when the current sweeps his legs out from under him. He battles to keep his head above water as I stand on the bank and reach out to him. He calls my name, but as I stretch my fingers towards him a thousand worms burst from every surface of my body. When they touch his skin his body breaks down into clumps of cloudy liquid that sink down beneath the surface of the water, breaking apart and disappearing entirely in the surf. And as I cry out the worms rise up and flow down my throat, stifling my screams.

XVIII

I wake with a start, the landscape of our bedroom alien in the darkness. I use a thin trickle of light to acclimate myself. I make out the shape of our comforter, the four posters of our bed frame. Slowly reality slides into place. Truth presents itself.

Between a crack in the curtain dust motes dance in the air. I watch as they pile up on the carpet and settle on furniture. I remember, briefly, that the dead cells of the epidermis are one of the major constituents of household dust. That we shed more than half our body weight over the course of a lifetime. I consider how strange it is that even now, months after his death, Phineas still walks among us. He floats in the air. He brushes our skin. We carry him in our bodies.

I lumber out of bed and slip into the bathroom. I reach into the medicine cabinet and inspect the floral bag out of habit. I turn the pill bottle over in my hand. I read Simone’s name off the label. I pour the pills onto my palm and perform a crude inventory but the count is always the same.

I know that the discovery is likely of no real significance. A prescription filled hastily at the height of her grief. Medication she no longer has any real use for, that she has probably forgotten entirely. But I feel such a sense of foreboding when I hold the bottle. It is as if I have uncovered the existence of a clandestine life. A reality from which I am totally isolated.

Simone struggled briefly with sleep during her pregnancy but an obstetrician assured us it was quite normal, nothing that would require medical intervention. It was discomfort, rather than insomnia. She was sure that Phineas was trying to expedite his own delivery. He would press on her bladder in the night and she would pace in the hall, full of a nervous energy. I remember waking often to find her missing, her body reduced to a cold spot on the bed.

She would take long baths. It was the only thing that seemed to soothe the both of them, and it was there that her waters had finally broken and she had called out my name in the darkness.